Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post

MrsCogan · 12-30-2007, 01:57 PM

We can't compare ourselves to modern apes when it comes to diet. Modern apes are as highly evolved as we are and are on a completely different branch of the family tree. To see what's natural for our species you have to look at our immediate ancestors. Homo erectus was using fire from 500,000 years ago to 1.8 million years ago depending on how strong you want your evidence.

Evolution is a messy, gradual process so it's tough to say exactly when our own species evolved, but it was about 100,000 to 150,000 years ago. Our ancestors had been cooking their food for at least 350,000 years before the first modern human saw the light of day and possibly a million and a half years before we turned up. That's a lot of evolution.

We evolved with fire and therefore cooking. Eating cooked food has several obvious evolutionary advantages. Fire kills pathogens. It makes some foods easier to digest and other foods cannot be eaten at all without breaking them down with heat. It widens food choices which is vital for health and well-being. Many seeds--dried beans, wheat, barley, etc.--are inedible raw but become available as food if you can boil them in water. Steve mentioned potatoes. Not only are they mildly poisonous raw, but they are nasty tasting. There are a lot of very healthy nutritious foods that are nasty raw but wonderful cooked.

We do have remote ancestors who were entirely vegan and ate only raw food, but they had enormous teeth and powerful jaws to deal with the tough stuff. Their gut was almost certainly a lot different from ours. Our teeth are a lot smaller and unspecialized which means they are meant for an omnivore.

I think that avoiding refined sugar and processed food is vital to our health. I think vegetarianism is fine--I was a vegetarian for about 15 years. I don't see the point of veganism, but it can be equally healthy with a little thought and care. I think an exclusively raw food diet is going too far. The potential risks far outweigh potential benefits. And, again, I don't see the point.

12-30-2007, 01:57 PM	#14 (permalink)
MrsCogan Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Oklahoma Posts: 46	I'm Just Sayin' We can't compare ourselves to modern apes when it comes to diet. Modern apes are as highly evolved as we are and are on a completely different branch of the family tree. To see what's natural for our species you have to look at our immediate ancestors. Homo erectus was using fire from 500,000 years ago to 1.8 million years ago depending on how strong you want your evidence. Evolution is a messy, gradual process so it's tough to say exactly when our own species evolved, but it was about 100,000 to 150,000 years ago. Our ancestors had been cooking their food for at least 350,000 years before the first modern human saw the light of day and possibly a million and a half years before we turned up. That's a lot of evolution. We evolved with fire and therefore cooking. Eating cooked food has several obvious evolutionary advantages. Fire kills pathogens. It makes some foods easier to digest and other foods cannot be eaten at all without breaking them down with heat. It widens food choices which is vital for health and well-being. Many seeds--dried beans, wheat, barley, etc.--are inedible raw but become available as food if you can boil them in water. Steve mentioned potatoes. Not only are they mildly poisonous raw, but they are nasty tasting. There are a lot of very healthy nutritious foods that are nasty raw but wonderful cooked. We do have remote ancestors who were entirely vegan and ate only raw food, but they had enormous teeth and powerful jaws to deal with the tough stuff. Their gut was almost certainly a lot different from ours. Our teeth are a lot smaller and unspecialized which means they are meant for an omnivore. I think that avoiding refined sugar and processed food is vital to our health. I think vegetarianism is fine--I was a vegetarian for about 15 years. I don't see the point of veganism, but it can be equally healthy with a little thought and care. I think an exclusively raw food diet is going too far. The potential risks far outweigh potential benefits. And, again, I don't see the point.